


Just a Painter and I'm Drawing a Blank

by Flames_and_Jade



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Band, Anal Sex, Inspired by Fanfiction, Introspection, M/M, Rimming, Smut, Social Issues, Soulmark AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 09:26:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15361386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flames_and_Jade/pseuds/Flames_and_Jade
Summary: Two anniversaries--two years and fifteen years after the moment that changed his life forever. The moment that he was ill-prepared to face, sitting on his couch in his underwear with orange-dusted fingers from Doritos, but that turned out better than he knew he deserved.AKA--A peek into my personal head cannon after reading SnitchesAndTalker's incredible story about Soulmarks.





	Just a Painter and I'm Drawing a Blank

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Best Part of Believe is the Lie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14862329) by [SnitchesAndTalkers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers). 



> This is Snitches' fault for being such an incredible author. I can't help but read her stories and become so immersed in her worlds that my brain spins a million places and things like this happen. If you haven't read her incredible story "The Best Part of Believe is the Lie," do yourself a favor and go read that first. This is just crayon scribblings in comparison, and I owe her my deepest thanks for (a) being an amazing friend, (b) letting me play in her sandbox, and (c) listening to me ramble about her world.

_ They stumble, more than a little drunk on both wine and each other as they crash their way through the door of their apartment. It’s slightly less-shitty than the one they first did this in--the first time the clattered like cymbals falling through space to crash together on threadbare carpet and a veneer of lies, because they’ve both grown up thank you very much. At least, that’s the thought that flits through Pete’s mind as he jabs the key at the lock--back pressed to the door, Patrick sucking a hickey to his neck--and hisses both at the spark of pleasurepain and in triumph when he feels the key plunge in blind.  _

 

_ Then they’re falling through, Patrick kicking the door shut behind them and honestly? Pete doesn’t really care if it’s locked. Let someone pick now to rob them of their few meagre possessions that couldn't be considered “hand-me-down,” because they’ll get a fucking show. Clothes are pulled off and thrown like they’re offensive, hands wind and wend and grab and grope until his knees are thumping against the mattress. He lets Patrick push him down to sheets that aren’t Star Wars--they’re actually a slightly-grown up pin-striped grey that Pete thinks makes Patrick’s skin look even more magnificent when he’s laid out, flushed and panting. But then all thoughts of sheets and robbers and housing upgrades fly from his mind as Patrick pushes his legs up, bending his knees as he kneels at the foot of the bed and buries his face between his cheeks without preamble. Pete howls at the ceiling, not caring if their crotchety upstairs neighbor minds--he can thump away all night at the floor with his cane because Pete certainly intends to have similar sounds emanate right back at him.  _

 

_ Patrick’s mouth--oh Patrick’s mouth, he could write poems and songs and books about that petal-pink wonderland--is sealed against him, tongue lashing delicate little strokes against his rim so he’s drowning in hot, in wet, in teasing perfection and desperate for more. Patrick knows that this is what drives him crazy, that this will have him pleading and begging (not that he needs much encouragement on that front) and make him come harder than a freight train. Patrick’s hand comes up to point at the dresser and Pete knows--after two glorious years with the most perfect, infuriating, and wonderful person on the planet what he’s trying to say without words. He scoots up the bed slowly, wriggling his spine like an inchworm so Patrick can move up with him, teeth grazing his rim as he moves up enough to reach into the nightstand drawer. He hands--okay, throws is more like it, but can you blame him?--the lube down to Patrick who is just starting to push two crossed fingers into his body and he can already feel his legs trembling with it. Planting his feet more firmly on the mattress he cants his hips, begging for more with a precise angle and whimpered pleas.  _

 

_ In the moment when Patrick’s fingers brush that place inside him that sends lightning up his spine and shivers back down at the same time, he thinks he sees the next galaxy over. He can feel his body loose and compliant, giving against Patrick’s onslaught, submitting with pleasure to tongue and spit and fingers and pressure. The third finger Patrick’s tucked in is good, so fucking good his head swims with it and Pete knows it's because he’s slicked his fingers with lube to ease the slide. He wants to thank him because he knows lubricant doesn’t exactly taste good, but words are not something Pete is capable of at the moment. So instead he gasps and groans and thanks Patrick with gentle fingers in his hair, brushing at his cheeks, stroking against his wrists that are holding his legs in place like a vice.  _

 

_ He wants to cry with both gratitude and heartbreak when Patrick pushes away to climb up his body, pausing to lick and suck and stroke as he goes. Blue eyes flick up to his and he sees the dizzy love in them, the heady desire, the I-know-all-your-shit-and-I-wouldn't-trade-it-for-the-world realism that makes Patrick the only one for him.  _

 

_ “God, I love you so fucking much.” Patrick breathes against his mouth as he finally, blessedly seals them together again. As much as Pete likes his mouth  _ other _ places, he can’t deny that THIS is where he likes his mouth the most. Kissing the air from his lungs and pushing blood through his veins for his messy, broken, cracked heart to pump...plus, kissing means they’re perfectly aligned for his other favorite thing as well.  _

 

_ “Need you, need you so bad, please.” He murmurs around the slide of Patrick’s lips and the shine of his teeth and he moans when Patrick shifts his hips so that his cock brushes against his own.  _

_  
_ _ “This?” He pulls away with a devilish grin to bite a bruise to his collarbone. “You want this?”  _

 

_ Pete can’t nodd fast enough, but he tries with a moan as Patrick pulls back to press the head against his slicked-up hole. It gives just the barest bit, pushing in not even a handful of millimeters before pulling away again and he brings his heels up to dig into the plushness of Patrick’s ass--God what an ass!--to drag him closer. “Don’t you fucking--it’s our anniversary you dick, I have RIGHTS, I--” He breaks off as Patrick ducks his head to bite at the sinew of his shoulder--bright and sharp and hard enough he feels his whole body flare stiff before melting limply into the bed as Patrick lubes himself up.  _

 

_ “ ‘Rights’ my ass.” Patrick snarks as he pulls back just enough to line up, teasing again with just a taste of what Pete craves so badly he wants to scream if he thought he could get away with it without another noise complaint. It’s almost like Patrick knows that, and he pushes in again, pressing Pete open just enough that he knows it’s coming but holds back.  _

 

_ “No,” he grins up at Patrick as he tries vainly to rock down, to push the ridged cap of the head inside. “Right now, MY ass has rights, not yours. MY ass has rights to your goddamn cock, so if you could--” Smart-ass words sizzle into a hiss of pleasure-pain as Patrick slides in, slides home with ridiculous patience. It had been so hard--pun intended--in the beginning for him to trust Patrick with this. To let someone else into himself, to allow someone to breach his body in the most intimate and vulnerable of ways. But his dogged insistence that he WOULD DO IT had been matched only by Patrick’s endless patience and here they were...Two years later and Patrick would joke that he’d never have guessed Pete would turn into such a big ole’ bottomy-bottom.  _

 

_ When he was fully-seated, flush and sealed against the curve of Pete’s ass, Patrick let out a breath. He always held it as he pushed in, like he was afraid that just that much more expansion would hurt Pete, and that was something he knew would never happen. Gentle hands cupped his cheeks, swept up into his hair and tipped his chin up so that he was looking into blue eyes that glimmered with a center of flaxen gold. “I fucking love you,” plush lips whispered and Pete felt like he could break against the waves of it all as Patrick’s hips started to roll, just a bit.  _

 

_ “More--” he gasped, desperate for the way it felt like he was being torn apart and put back together all at once, needing the build of fire in his gut that would pulse out like liquid gold through his veins. He needed the push-pull, the smacking burning gorging messy throbbing shove that would knock him into next week, into another two years of Loving Patrick. “Please, make me--more, c’mon I--” _

 

_ “Shhhh.” Patrick grabbed his wrists from where he was, he knew absently and far-away, pulling too hard on the fine golden hair that was rapidly darkening with sweat. “I got you.” He pinned Pete’s wrists above his head and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, mouth plumbing and moving in time with his hips until Pete felt like he would surely compress down into the of the parts of him that mattered. A heart that loved Patrick, lungs that laughed with Patrick, eyes that saw the incomparable beauty of Patrick...what else was there? He turned his arms in Patrick’s gentle grip and laced his fingers together with Patrick’s above his head--both of them holding him steady like he was learning to do. It was a metaphor he would love to dwell on...but at a later date. When he was less occupied with teetering on the knife’s edge of coming his brains out.  _

 

_ They had figured out once Pete had decided to (as Patrick delicately put it), ‘get out of your own fucking head idiot and trust the one person on the goddamn planet that isn’t actually trying to hurt you’ that he really did like bottoming. So much so in fact, that Patrick had watched with wide-eyed astonishment as his older--and much more sexually-experienced chosen soulmate--had come untouched the first time they had really, really fucked. There had been silly jokes and laughter but Pete didn’t care--what did it matter that his body behaved like a fifteen-year old who had just gotten his first glimpse of tits through a hole in the locker room door?  _

 

_ So he knew, he knew he was balanced on the edge of the precipice, waiting for the final thrust to knock him over and let him tumble down, down into a fall of white-hot sparks and ecstasy. Patrick was gasping above him, hands sweaty in his own and Pete arched his back, clenching down as hard as he could… _

 

_ And then they were both crying at the ceiling, Pete’s head thrown back as he bellowed out his release and Patrick was pressing his face to his neck in that way he did when he was trying his hardest to not howl along with him. But the high little whines he gasped into Pete’s ear were his favorite sound in the world...breathy and strung out and just for him.  _

 

_ Then Patrick was tumbling off him and flopping to his back like he was dying...and Pete supposed they both were, in the best way. He stayed where he was, letting the end of his orgasm wind through him and just enjoyed the way his skin felt like it finally fit right as Patrick trembled. But then--bodies cooling--Patrick rolled over and pulled him close, tucking Pete’s back to his chest and cradling him like he was precious.  _

 

_ His large motor functions returned in degrees---first he wiggled his feet, then he sighed out his contentment. In the end though, he reached trembling fingers to where their wrists were laying next to each other on the bed and traced his fingers across the letters. Patrick still had PLKW on his wrist, and Pete was starting to believe that maybe he was just a little bit Patrick’s soulmate...albeit in a ridiculous, I-never-hang-up-shirts type of way. His wrist was covered in Patrick’s looping script...as close an approximation to the words he had scrawled there that first morning. He stroked the letters and felt Patrick humming behind him.  _

 

_ “Two years.” There was a lot left unsaid in those words and the years that stood represented behind them--trust that had to be built and rebuilt, his own battle to find a way to be halfway the person Patrick deserved. The way his hands had shook as he took the pill bottles from where there were hidden under the sink and handed them to Patrick, confessing his fear to try again to find a chemical balance but that he WANTED to...for him. He was just now starting to feel the edges of hope that perhaps this new regimen might work--that he might be stable by the time the next anniversary rolled around. Two years of waking up next to Patrick (on the days he slept, that is) and basking in the idea that someone wanted him. Not because fate had said so, but because he was actually worth wanting.  _

 

_ “Yeah.” He murmured, thumb rubbing over the letters on Patrick’s wrist before a pale hand came up to cover his own. Patrick pulled their hands close, tucking them into Pete’s chest in a way that made him feel safe and pressed a gentle kiss to his neck.  _

 

_ “You know you’re still totally wrong about Terminator, right?” Patrick snarked around a yawn as he pressed his nose to the coarse hair at the base of Pete’s neck, and he snorted as he closed his eyes, content to float on the feeling of being safe.  _

 

_ “You’re lucky you’re cute when you’re wrong, Pattycakes.”  _

  
  


_ ~//~ _

 

It’s been fifteen years. 

 

He pulls the blanket up just a little higher on his shoulder and settles a bit more back into the pillows. Curled up at the window seat of the landing, he’s watching the rain come down in sheets, illuminated briefly by flashes of lightning and thunder that rattles the windowpanes next to him. 

 

The little bay window nook was what sold him on the house, if he was being honest. Patrick had loved the refinished hardwood floors, the extra room for his instruments and records, the front porch that just had room for a swing. Pete liked all those things too, but he  _ loved _ the little window seat built into the landing, with narrow bookcases on either side. Patrick’s mom had helped--okay, who was he kidding, she had 100% done it for them--to make a tufted cushion for the top and helped him pick out pillows for the sides. It was perfect, it was his little place that for some reason made him feel nearly as safe as he felt when Patrick’s arms were wrapped around him. But it was different...it was a little slice of solitude that for some reason didn’t feel oppressive. It was a space that somehow made him  _ more _ at ease with himself rather than less. 

 

He had crawled silently from Patrick’s side as his breath whistled adorably from between slightly parted lips and rooted around for a reasonably-clean pair of something that would qualify as pants. After finding a pair of gym shorts he hoped fit the bill, he tiptoed from the room but not before tucking the covers gently around Patrick. He doesn’t know why tonight he can’t drop into that sleep that usually takes them both afterwards, fucked-out and floating in the starlight of each other, but he accepts it like the old, familiar thing it is. Insomnia has always plagued him but over the years, but they found the right medications and he finally,  _ finally  _ for the first time in his life doesn’t feel like he was barely holding back from spinning out of control. Now, he reflects as he sits on his window seat, he can handle it. No longer does he feel the need to knock himself unconscious every night with a dose of valium, of ambien, of restoril. Now he can usually crawl in next to Patrick and find sleep tucked in the curve of his spine, the bend of his elbow, the planes of his chest. That kind of sleep--real, authentic sleep that he didn’t have to shake out of a bottle--it was worth the occasional night like tonight where he found himself curling up on the window seat with a blanket. 

 

His mind drifts back to that night fifteen years ago when he’d been sitting in just his underwear, eating cheetos, and there had been a bang on his door that had changed his life. Patrick, doused and dripping, conversely understanding and spitting-mad as he had tried to explain with words that he knew sounded pitifully pathetic why he had been the World’s Biggest Douchebag. But somehow...somehow he had found the right thing to say, a way to give Patrick a glimpse into the feelings that felt like they would break him apart. It had miraculously been enough, somehow. If he was honest, he still wasn’t sure sometimes why Patrick had given him a second chance, but fuck he was grateful for it. 

 

Brain skipping like a stone over a lake, he waltzed through the last fifteen years with his Patrick. It hadn’t always been perfect--he was still a spectacular hot-mess sometimes, or as his kids would say it a  _ raging dumpster fire _ . Patrick still had a temper the size of the state of Texas squeezed into something the size of Connecticut, but they were... _ them _ . He thought back to his decision to put on his big-boy pants and get a job, a  _ real _ job. Not like delivering packages for UPS was glamorous, but it meant he was always moving and he could listen to music in his headphones as he hopped in and out of the brown truck. And on the days when he wanted to talk to people as he handed them their boxes, he could...and on the days he didn’t, well. People generally wanted their package more than they wanted to chat about the new TMNT flick with the guy with the Emo Bangs that had totally gone out of style years ago. But it had been a huge thing for him--something that he finally felt, for the first time, that he didn’t suck at, that he could do and actually  _ contribute _ . He had sloughed the feeling of being a deadbeat, a ne’er-do-well like an old skin...and he hadn’t looked back. They both had been poor as hell when they were both in school, trying to make something of their lives in different ways, but there was always Patrick. 

 

A whisper of movement from the stairs catches his attention and then Patrick was settling down on the opposite end of the bench, legs tucked up and his own blanket wrapped around him like a cape. Their toes each peeked out from under the blankets, and he gave Pete a small smile glazed in weak moonlight. “Couldn’t sleep?” He asks and Pete just shakes his head as the rain sets an easy rhythm, staring at the tree in the yard as it shudders under the wind’s onslaught. Patrick seems content to sit and just  _ be _ with him and he’s grateful, so grateful for that...so thankful that he decided that fateful night fifteen years ago to trust Patrick. 

 

“Do you...ever wonder what would have happened if you had stayed? With Paul?” The words are tumbling out of his mouth before he really realizes he’s asking, but maybe that was the moonlight. Patrick looks up at him, eyes widening for a moment before he shakes his head gently. 

 

“No, because I  _ didn’t _ . It’s not...it wasn’t an option, for me. You know that.” Pete looks at him then--the mussed hair sticking up on one side of his head, the blue eyes that never seem to miss anything on his face. They’re both older--Patrick’s filled out and then thinned out and everything in-between and Pete thinks it’s impossible to pick his favorite Patrick. His own hair isn’t long and emo anymore, now it’s short and he thinks it looks kinda respectable, which isn’t a word that he would have ever guessed would apply to him. Mostly, though...they’re just them. Perfect. 

 

“I’m still...I still can’t believe you picked me sometimes. How lucky I got.” He whispers and Patrick just shakes his head and smiles at him, the give and take of sentences they’ve exchanged a thousand times easy with familiarity but no less poignant. Pete knows that Patrick doesn’t see it that way, has never seen his decision to be with a blank as a lesser choice and with the years he’s started to believe him. It’s still there...and on tonight of all nights he can’t help but think back to what could have been. But Patrick’s there, sure and real so he bends at the waist to crawl over and settle his head on his lap. It’s plush and perfect and he can’t help but let out a sigh as gentle hands settle into his hair, all smooth movements and just being there. He reaches up and takes one of Patrick’s hands, twining their fingers together as the rain falls and just thinks. 

 

He thinks about Patrick keeping his promise and scrawling words on his arm every morning. Sometimes they didn’t quite make sense, but hey, that was okay. His brain catches on one morning that he woke to Patrick stumbling around their messy bedroom, glasses hanging off his face as he crashed into the desk in the frantic search for a pen--the one on the nightstand had apparently picked that morning to run out of ink. Pete had pulled him back, tears in his eyes and kissed the heartbroken disappointment from the curve of his lips, murmuring  _ thank you _ against them. That night he had hesitantly asked Patrick what he would think if he got a tattoo...afraid that the whole  _ faking-a-soulmark-and-going-to-jail-and-breaking-his-heart _ episode would cloud his intent. But Patrick had just smiled and stroked the blank space on his wrist and kissed him. 

 

He thinks about finding the non-profit that had become his life, his fucking purpose all wrapped up in a calling that he never thought he’d find outside the desperate intent to find one bad decision to follow up the previous one.  _ World Outside _ was everything he desperately needed when he was 18 and his wrist stayed maddeningly, heartbreakingly blank. He found himself going back to school so he could be more than the secretary and event coordinator--he wanted to be able to actually  _ help _ these people. These kids just like him that he thought of as  _ his kids _ , his Lost Boys and Girls that he wanted to give the world and more. 

 

He thinks of Patrick, signing a petition to give equal rights to couples who weren’t bonded by the letters on their wrists. Then his mind fast-forwards to three years ago, when the first kids got marks at 16 and 17 and shock rippled across the world. To the landmark case when a sixty-something old dude stepped forward, declaring that the MMS on his wrist meant he could claim the sixteen-year old girl who had the same initials like his property. It had been the first time Pete felt like he could look his father in the eye and stand proud as they both worked tirelessly to help the terrified girl--Melissa Marie Steinhart--from both sides of society. His father had represented her pro bono in court, while he had been her counselor and court-appointed advocate. The warm, blossoming feeling of having made a difference that had gripped his his heart when she found her real mark at an away basketball match had been amazing. So had the pride in his father’s eyes when the judge declared that no one could  _ force _ her into be with someone, bond or not, and Pete was standing beside her. 

 

He thinks about how things had changed over the years...how there were support groups for those who found love outside of the soulmarks, for the blanks. How the state now awarded the same legal status to those who chose to be with someone other than their mark. Oh it wasn’t perfect--there were still stigmas and judgement and stares sometimes, when people saw the initials on Patrick’s wrist and the looping, scrawled script on his own. But so much had changed for the better, it was somehow easier to take the bad in stride. 

 

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Patrick murmurs softly, like he knows that his thoughts are starting to jumble together like run-on sentences and runaway trains. 

 

“Just...how far it’s been. How far we’ve come.” He shifts a bit in Patrick’s lap, pillowing his cheek better against his thigh. “How far the world has come, you know? I mean, it’s not perfect but I never thought we’d be here. That I’d have gotten this chance.” 

 

“Sure you aren’t reminiscing about being a disaster and how much you used to be able to drink before you’d puke?” 

 

“God no.” They both chuckle and he turned, leaning against the window so he could look up at Patrick, face painted in ever-changing streaks by the rain pattering against the glass. It made him look like a Monet or a Van Gogh, he thought--impressionistic, hazy, beautiful.  _ His _ . “I just...I wish I could freeze this moment so I could give it to you whenever we’re run off our feet and tired and busy. ‘Cause you’re the best in the world and you deserve to always know that. I know that sounds weird but...” The sentence ended with a yawn and Patrick gave him a fond smile. 

 

“After this long, I think I’ve gotten pretty good at decoding the ‘weird’ things about you.” He pulled him up so he sitting against him, wrapping his arms around Pete’s waist and settling his chin on his shoulder. “You might not have mystical letters on your wrist that say you’re mine, but that doesn’t make it any less true. We’re here--that’s all that matters. And--” he pressed a soft kiss to Pete’s neck, “--I think  _ here _ is pretty fantastic.” 

 

Pete nodded again, another yawn making his head loll back against Patrick’s shoulder. “I love you.” 

 

“Love you too. Happy Anniversary, asshole.” Patrick squeezes his waist gently. “Think you can sleep now? God knows tomorrow morning will be the one Jesse figures out how to crawl out of his crib and burn the house down.” 

 

“Hey you brought it up, that means it’d be your fault.” Pete snickers as they stand and pad up the stairs, past the room painted soft blues and greys and fall into bed. Patrick pulls him close, the rain a comforting counterpane to the cadence of his breathing and Pete feels peace like he’s only ever felt with Patrick. 

 

Who cared what was or wasn’t on his wrist naturally? The words there--and the love behind them-- _ that  _ was what counted. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The story title, as well as the name of Pete's non-profit, are from "Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?" from Infinity on High.


End file.
